


Ursa

by featherpoet



Series: Changes [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: I'm sorry Ursa, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Ozai is seriously the worst, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Ursa is just a kid too, Young Zuko, Zuko is a queer kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22157263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherpoet/pseuds/featherpoet
Summary: Ursa is confined to her room for several days and must reflect on her life and the lives of her children.This was conceived as a part of A Lasting Change (specifically chapter 4), but it felt best to isolate it for tonal and pov reasons. You can read it as a companion to the longer work or independently. Please heed the tags!!
Relationships: Ozai/Ursa (Avatar)
Series: Changes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562962
Kudos: 45





	Ursa

**Author's Note:**

> cw: threats of rape and violence

The days since the argument had been both terrifying and insufferable for Ursa. Ozai had confined her to her rooms, lest anyone see the mark he had left on her face. He had dismissed all of her handmaidens – whether temporarily or permanently, Ursa did not know – and replaced them with members of his own personal staff. They brought her meals three times a day and stood outside her door at all hours. She had her every comfort attended to. She hated every second of it.

Ursa knew better than to attempt to cross Ozai when he was like this; she could tolerate the welt purpling across the left side of her face, or the bruises he had left across her body in past episodes. These were merely physical ailments, and each one was like fuel for the fire of her defiance. She knew how to turn these things into strength. She knew how to fight back, and when she could push. But Ozai had threatened _Zuko_ this time, and Ursa would never endanger him. Zuko was her precious star, the brightest light in her sky. She would do anything, _anything_ to protect him, and yet she found herself suddenly powerless.

“You bastard,” Ursa cursed into the empty room.

She knelt at the low table and busied her hands with brewing a pot of tea. Her mind was far away, plotting.

\---

The worst part of Ursa’s confinement was the separation from her children. Her heart ached for them, sometimes so strongly that she felt paralyzed, stricken with longing to peer into their worlds and watch them learn and grow.

In one such moment, Ursa sat with her calligraphy brush suspended over the paper, black ink dripping over a half-penned character: Change. They were changing so fast and Ursa was missing precious days. She was already dismayed at the sheer number of competing influences on her children’s thoughts and behaviors; as children of the royal family, the responsibility of raising them was distributed amongst dozens of advisors, relatives, and tutors. Ursa – a single, lonely woman, periodically beaten and locked away in her chambers at the whim of her cruel husband – knew that she would never be able to fight back against the ugliest traits being fostered in their hearts.

Her thoughts turned to Azula, and she busied her hands with drawing the three characters of her young daughter’s name. Azula, the viper who was cossetted by her father and whose capacity for cruelty was mirrored back to her as her greatest strength. Ursa sighed deeply, her heart settling into a familiar alloy of regret and pity. She had failed to reach Azula’s secret compassion, and she worried every day that it might become too deeply buried to recover at all. Too often, Ursa had observed the girl speaking harshly to her friends and tormenting Zuko with small pranks. Ursa’s efforts to correct that behavior had turned her into an enemy in Azula’s eyes. Worse still, the scope of Azula’s plots was much more serious than Ursa had realized: even the depths of her estrangement from the rest of the palace didn’t stop Ursa from knowing that Kunyo was likely on his way to the colonies now. Banishment, enacted over nothing but the selfish whimsy of a spoiled young girl.

Tears blurred Ursa’s vision unexpectedly. She laid down her brush and wiped her eyes with a cloth. “I’m sorry, Azula,” she whispered shakily. “I hope I can still help you.”

After a moment, the greater portion of the emotional swell had quieted. Ursa’s eyes fell upon her tall wardrobe. She stood and walked over, withdrawing Kiyi from one of the drawers. A small smile crept onto her face, which Ursa held in spite of the dull pain that pulsed across her cheek. The pretty doll had been a welcome companion many times before, and like clockwork, Ursa found her thoughts walking familiar paths around her eldest child, her precious Zuko.

With Zuko, she had had more luck. He trusted her, he was vulnerable with her, and that had made it easier to parent him. Zuko was lonely, too. Ursa understood that feeling, so they were able to help each other. The time they spent together was a welcome reprieve for Ursa from an otherwise never-ending malaise. She had come to depend on it, perhaps even more than he had…

But there were shadows cast over that time, too, and they began to seep into Ursa’s thoughts in earnest. Zuko depended on her, of course. As his mother, Ursa had welcomed this: she was able to have a normal relationship with her child, just like she had always wanted. For a while, at first, she was even able to pretend that she was still living in Hira’a, as if she hadn’t been plucked from her life and forced to become a princess of the Fire Nation… But Ursa had been younger then, and more naïve. Now, her thoughts were filled with worry that she had encouraged her son’s dependence upon her to an extent that might prove to be dangerous for him. Every time Ozai struck her and shut her away, that worry set itself more deeply within her heart. Because no matter how hard she might try to shut the rest of the world out of her fantasy, Ursa’s relationship with Zuko was _not_ normal, and she had no power to make it so. Being the parent of a prince could never be normal. Had every moment she spent entertaining that fantasy been merely delaying the inevitable? Had she actually been hurting Zuko even more by giving him a space to feel like a normal child?

_Is Zuko even a normal child?_

Finally, the thought Ursa had been trying to avoid for years smashed through her defenses. Ursa sank slowly to the floor, sliding her back along the wardrobe and holding Kiyi against her chest. No matter where she looked, her eyes were filled with visions of Zuko floating around her room – Zuko, sitting at the table drinking tea with Kiyi – Zuko, leaning over the vanity desk practicing his face paint – Zuko, twirling around on the carpet in an oversized nightgown – Zuko, laughing and lovely in this secret corner of his life. Zuko, _happy_.

Ursa felt overwhelmed by a sudden, profound sadness. No, of course Zuko wasn’t a normal child. He was so unspeakably precious, full of a beautiful gentleness that no prince would ever be allowed to show. Had he been born in Hira’a, Zuko might have even chosen to live like a princess, perhaps dressing in the bright costumes of Ursa’s theatre troupe with loose hair and that beautiful, secret smile displayed openly for all to see. Before she could stop herself, Ursa imagined her dear Ikem, the love she left behind, throwing his arms wide, ready to embrace Ursa’s _daughter_ , and they both looked so happy and safe and warm.

The sharpness of that longing cut into Ursa’s heart like a thousand tiny daggers. She coiled up and choked on a sob. She felt raw and utterly exposed to the full force of her emotions. Ursa _hurt_ , because she knew that no matter how true her vision might be, no matter what her poor child wanted, she could never provide that life for Zuko. His life had already been decided for him. He was a prince, a boy, and an example to the whole nation. If he failed to live up to that role now, Ursa realized with horror that Ozai’s threat to cast him from the palace would be the very kindest of the punishments that Zuko might face.

Her vision of Ikem suddenly crumbled, swept out of her mind’s eye like dust in a gust of wind, and Ozai’s cruel voice echoed in her ears. “I wiped that treacherous dog from existence.” Ursa’s eyes overflowed with tears. Ikem was _dead_. Ozai had slaughtered him, and all because Ursa had wielded her love for Ikem against her cruel husband in a futile effort to steal back some control in her life. What harm would her carelessness bring upon Zuko?

Ursa had been a fool. She had encouraged Zuko to trust her, but he was only a child. He couldn’t possibly have understood how slim the facsimile of her protection truly was. She had never been powerful enough to shield him from the scrutiny of the rest of his life. And she had known this, she was horrified to admit, ever since that first night when she found Zuko with Kiyi out by the pond – known it and ignored it, out of a vain desire to enjoy the singular trust of her son, desperate to play the role of a loving parent regardless of the consequences. She had reassured herself that she was doing the right thing by allowing Zuko to explore the secrets of his heart, but Ursa had always known the shape of the dangers that awaited him down that path. Now that she was looking at them directly, her heart tore itself in half. A true parent would have done the work for their helpless child and considered those consequences on their behalf. Perhaps Ursa herself had been just a child wearing an adult’s clothing, full of hurt and loneliness, seeking solace within the grandiosity of her costume.

 _You’ve failed both of them,_ she thought. Her heart was an ocean of shame.

\---

When the door to her room opened that night, Ursa didn’t bother to look up. She was sitting at her vanity desk pulling a brush through her hair. She assumed that it was simply one of Ozai’s staff come to bring food or some useless convenience and then slip back out of her prison as she herself so longed to do. What was the good of looking? It wouldn’t make them talk or set her free. She hardened her gaze directly into the mirror, resolute and proud.

Stripped of her sight, her ears strained rebelliously out into the center of the room, searching for the telltale shuffling and clattering around her low table. Strangely, there were no such sounds. A question rose in Ursa’s mind alongside a swell of anxiety.

Ozai appeared over her shoulder in the mirror. Ursa clenched her jaw against her startle, and laid down her brush with a faintly shaking hand.

 _What do you want?_ Her thoughts dripped with venom, but she held them back. “Ozai,” she said curtly, the edge of her voice a dull echo of the lash she wished to wield against him, almost not an edge at all. Almost.

“Wife.” Ozai’s lip curled into a warped smile. Ursa met his gaze in the mirror, chin held high. She nudged her eyebrow almost imperceptibly into a subtle question.

Ozai ignored it, advancing until he stood directly behind her. His hands encircled her, trapping her jaw before she could react. She glared daggers at him as he pulled her chin to the side, somewhere in the grey between gently and roughly, with his right hand. With his left, he tracked a finger along Ursa’s forehead, drawing her hair back like a curtain. A green and purple bruise flickered in the firelight. Ozai’s eyes danced.

He said nothing, which was the cruelest thing he could have said. Ursa shrugged her shoulders and jerked free of his grip. She crossed her arms defensively across her chest and stomach, disgusted and humiliated. Only then did Ozai speak, wearing a grin openly across his face.

“You will get to leave these chambers tomorrow,” he said, his tone measured and amused. “My brother will be visiting the palace, and you are expected to show your face to welcome him.” His smile widened. “Well, not _this_ face. You’ll have to cover that up, of course.”

Ursa felt like a piece of paper folding in on itself over and over. She was small and full of creases, but each fold resisted her more than the last. She couldn’t quite disappear. And so she was left: barely present, cowering before the mirror. The golden eyes reflected back at her were glassy and distant. And yet, Ozai’s voice cut right through the folds of her defenses and pierced into Ursa’s core like a knife. She longed for the power to block him out entirely.

“Be careful that you don’t embarrass me, dear wife.” Ozai narrowed his eyes, the cruel smile falling too quickly from his face. “It won’t be you that I strike if you should falter.”

 _Zuko!_ Ursa’s heart exploded with sudden pain and she spun back into her body, reeling and afraid. Ozai seemed delighted.

“That’s right. Your treachery will bring his suffering. Just like how it brought Ikem’s.” He arched an eyebrow dramatically. “Have you finished mourning him, wife? Would you like to know how your precious boyfriend looked before I killed him? Hear what he said?” He paused, savoring Ursa’s stricken expression. Ozai bent over and brought his lips close to her left ear and continued in a whisper. “Or perhaps you long to reminisce about the tryst you never had? I could play along, you know. If you close your eyes, you’ll never know the difference…”

He brushed a fingertip along Ursa’s jaw, tracing slowly from her chin to her ear while he pressed a kiss against her neck. Ursa recoiled with a great shudder and squeezed her eyes shut, tears streaming freely down her face. Her arms constricted tightly around herself like cords about to snap, hands clutching fistfuls of her nightgown. Ozai grabbed her left arm just below the shoulder while he nuzzled into her neck, effortlessly pinning her in place. She was shaking, her breathing quick and shallow and panicked.

Ozai drew fractionally back, hovering beside Ursa’s neck. “You’re right,” he breathed against her skin. “Not tonight. It shall be your reward for your good behavior tomorrow. And of course you’ll behave. You know what’s at stake.”

Ozai released his grip and stood straight behind her, stepping back. His amber eyes bore harshly down at the reflection of Ursa’s lowered head. “I look forward to indulging your fantasy, dear wife.”

Footsteps. A door opened, and swung closed.

Like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut, Ursa fell to the floor between her desk and her bed. A great sob escaped her lips, and for a long moment she couldn’t breathe in, her lungs too tight and empty. The tiny part of her that went on thinking thought that maybe she would die like this. Finally, she gasped, grabbed a waste bin, and was violently ill.

\---

The first rays of morning dusted around the edges of the thick, red curtains. Ursa sat, fully awake, on her bed, arms clutched around her knees. She didn’t move except to breathe, and even that was faint. Her eyes were unfocused and sunken deep into purple cushions.

Ursa blinked, and the pain of it brought her somewhat back into her body. It must have been quite a while since the last time. Or perhaps she simply had no more water left with which to relieve her dry eyes; it had all spilt out over the course of many quiet, lonely hours. She was once-wet paper long since wrung out and hardened into a chaotically crumpled ball.

Paper. That seemed important, somehow. With difficulty, Ursa focused her gaze across the room, at her writing desk. It was too far away to read anything, but her mind effortlessly supplied the last characters she had penned there: Zuko.

_Today, you can go outside._

Ursa stirred slightly, bones creaking across her stiff body as she gently stretched into motion.

_Today, you have a chance._

There wasn’t any part of her body that didn’t ache, so Ursa simply stood, simply walked.

_Today, you can redeem yourself._

The pen was heavy in her hand.

_Today, you can protect him._

With that, Ursa wrote.

**Author's Note:**

> Continue reading [A Lasting Change: Chapter 5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21681337/chapters/56094766) if you linked here from Chapter 4.
> 
> Or, read from the beginning of [A Lasting Change](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21681337) if you haven’t started it yet!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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